This invention relates generally to the field of electronic communications and more particularly to a method for a sender to locate and delete a piece of electronic mail after the mail has been sent.
With personal computers having become commonplace, most office communications, and indeed a large percentage of so-called xe2x80x9chome communicationsxe2x80x9d, are now conducted electronically. The ability for a sender to communicate a message to another at any time of day, and to have a fairly reliable record of delivery of the message, facilitates communications, particularly in a distributed working environment where co-workers may be physically located at geographically remote sites. Communications among individuals located in different countries and/or in different time zones are particularly suitable for electronic delivery, such that a message can be opened by a recipient during the recipient""s normal business day, even if the electronic message was sent hours earlier during the sender""s business day. In addition, the ease of distributing a single electronic mail message to a plurality of recipients greatly reduces the time spent in providing information to a large group of interested parties.
The sending of electronic mail (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9ce-mailxe2x80x9d) must, however, be exercised with care. Once the sender clicks on the xe2x80x9csendxe2x80x9d button to send an e-mail to one or a group of people, the e-mail message is immediately transmitted to the mailboxes of each of the recipients and is not retrievable. There currently exists no way to xe2x80x9crescindxe2x80x9d an e-mail message, although there may be reasons why a sender may wish to delete the e-mail after it has been sent; for example, failure to include a desired attachment; realization that wrong information was included; fear that the content should not have been xe2x80x9cwrittenxe2x80x9d down in light of privilege doctrine, a determination that the message is obsolete, due to intervening events; etc. In any of those instances, if a message could be deleted before it has been read, time and resources could be saved and possible misunderstandings could be avoided.
It is desirable, therefore, and is an object of the present invention to provide a system and method for rescinding e-mails after they have been sent.
It is another object of the invention to provide a system and method for tracing all copies of e-mails which have been sent, determining their current status, and reporting that status to the sender.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide a method for a sending site to automatically generate and send a cancellation notice to an e-mail receiving site and for that receiving site to automatically locate and delete the e-mail.
These and other objects are realized by the present invention which provides a system and method wherein a sender can create an e-mail cancellation request which identifies a previously-sent e-mail, bears the designation of a cancellation request as its xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9creferencexe2x80x9d, and is automatically communicated to all of the same sites to which the previously-sent e-mail was transmitted. At the receiving end, a cancellation agent monitors all incoming e-mails to determine if any are cancellation requests. If a cancellation request is detected at the receiving end, the cancellation agent locates the identified e-mail and deletes same. Once the e-mail has been located, or alternatively upon deletion of same, the cancellation agent replies to the cancellation request by notifying the sender of the status of the e-mail, preferably by reporting the location at which the identified e-mail was found (e.g., inbox folder, trash folder, etc.) and the disposition (e.g., deletion) of the e-mail. Should the cancellation agent be unable to locate the e-mail, due to the fact that the recipient has permanently deleted the e-mail or has downloaded the e-mail, the sender is notified of that fact.